It is a microcosm.
December 2008 archive
Dec 17 2008
Muse in the Morning
Muse in the Morning |
State of the Onion XXIX
Art Link Scratching at the Surface
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Dec 17 2008
Don’t Watch This Video: Inside Chinese Fur Farms
This article and video are from PETA.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), with more than 2.0 million members and supporters, is the largest animal rights organization in the world.
PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in laboratories, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of beavers, birds and other “pests,” and the abuse of backyard dogs.
PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.
Skinned Alive. Why? China supplies more than half the finished furs garments imported for sale in the U.S.
When undercover investigators made their way onto Chinese fur farms recently, they found that many animals are still alive and struggling desperately when workers flip them onto their backs or hang them up by their legs or tails to skin them. When workers on these farms begin to cut the skin and fur from an animal’s leg, the free limbs kick and writhe. Workers stomp on the necks and heads of animals who struggle too hard to allow a clean cut.
When the fur is finally peeled off over the animals’ heads, their naked, bloody bodies are thrown onto a pile of those who have gone before them. Some are still alive, breathing in ragged gasps and blinking slowly. Some of the animals’ hearts are still beating five to 10 minutes after they are skinned. One investigator recorded a skinned raccoon dog on the heap of carcasses who had enough strength to lift his bloodied head and stare into the camera.
Pledge to go fur-free at PETA.org.
Dec 17 2008
Killing Tribes For Oil & Logs
You know the saying that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it really make a sound? Well, some governments and companies are banking that the public needs to hear or see uncontacted tribes before we care that they are being killed or relocated in the name of oil and mahogany. Companies are invading indigenous lands of uncontacted tribes causing their deaths, yet officials claim that unseen tribes are nonexistent mythical creations of anti oil and logging developments. The tribes are then forcibly relocated or members killed sufficient to terminate the tribe’s continuity with future generations. Yet, some would like the public to believe that no one was harmed because the tribes are mythical.
Dec 17 2008
So, this is what it has come down to…
After eight years of the Bush administration being wrong on everything they did, both overseas and at home, it comes down to this…
What is “this” you ask?
Dec 17 2008
Yglesias: Taking the Bus to a Public Transport Stimulus
Xposted to Agent Orange, My Left Wing, …
I have been following a “problem” with the stimulus, involving the “break ground in 3 months” guideline. That is, since we have had an eight year assault against public transport from the White House, with special focus on rail projects, we don’t have a lot of energy-saving public transport projects that can break ground in 3 months.
Robert Cruickshank discusses this on the California HSR blog: Obama and Congress to Screw Up the Stimulus.
However, Matthew Yglesias has a smart answer to this: Fast-Acting Transit.
More detail, after the fold.
Dec 17 2008
Pony Pary/Open Thread: Celtic United Edition!
This Pony Party is an Open Thread. Chat Away! Please do not rec the Pony Party.
Dec 16 2008
Giving Bush the Boot, Marking the Moratorium
Friday’s Iraq Moratorium will offer a mixed bag of activity across the country, from holiday-themed events to footwear-related actions.
Antiwar caroling, mall walks to raise shoppers’ consciousness, and vigiling by Santa are among the plans.
Elsewhere, the shoe-throwing by an Iraqi journalist have inspired actions like a “Give Bush the Boot” footwear-throwing contest in Milwaukee, and plans by others in New York and Connecticut to mail shoes to the White House on Moratorium day, with a note calling for an end to the war and occupation.
It’s all part of the ongoing, growing effort to get US troops out of Iraq by ratcheting up locally-based antiwar activity on the Third Friday of every month. Friday, Dec. 19, is Iraq Moratorium #16.
Moratorium efforts got a boost last weekend when the National Assembly of United for Peace and Justice, the nation’s largest antiwar coalition with 1,400 member groups, approved an action plan that includes support for the Moratorium’s Third Friday organizing efforts.
Here’s a list of what’s planned this week (that we know of; there are always others we find out about later.): December actions.
You’ll find lots of other information and ideas on the Moratorium website.
Friday’s the day. The war’s got to stop and we’ve got to stop it. Please do something,
Dec 16 2008
Disappointing News From Auburn University
A bit of a controversy is developing in my back yard concerning my alma mater, Iowa State University, and its former football coach Gene Chizik. After compiling a 5-19 record at Iowa State in his only two seasons there, Chizik somehow landed the head coaching job at Auburn University in Alabama. Given Chizik’s rather short and unremarkable tenure with Iowa State, the reaction of some Auburn fans was . . . oh, let’s call it . . . mixed:
“I don’t know how to react. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem like they could possibly be so shortsighted. I’m going to spend tonight trying to figure out how to react. That, and drinking.”
Was there a better candidate for Auburn’s head coaching position? The athletic director at Auburn, Jay Jacobs, also interviewed Turner Gill, a young coach who just led Buffalo to their first bowl game and conference championship. Gill has been prominently mentioned for other coaching vacancies after turning Buffalo’s lowly football program around in only three years. Why would Auburn pass over Turner Gill for Gene Chizik?
It couldn’t have anything to do with Gill being African-American and having a white wife, could it? Former NBA star Charles Barkley, who attended Auburn, thought it did when he described a conversation he had with Gill about the coaching position at Auburn:
“We talked about the whole race thing in Alabama,” Barkley said. “I told him it’s there and it’s going to be anywhere you go. I told him you can’t not take the job because of racism. He was worried about being nothing more than a token interview. He was concerned about having a white wife. It’s just very disappointing to me.”
Dec 16 2008
Four at Four
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Not much joy for the U.S. economy today:
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The Washington Post reports the Federal Reserve slashes interest rate to historic low. “The Federal Reserve slashed a key short-term interest rate to effectively zero today… The move cuts the rate to the lowest it has been in the 54 years that records go back, and stunned market watchers who expected a more modest cut.”
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Bloomberg News reports U.S. industrial production falls on autos. “Industrial production fell 0.6 percent, the third drop in four months,” according to the Federal Reserve. “Automakers slashed their assembly rate to the lowest level in more than 18 years.” Vehicle assembly is still one of the few things made in the U.S.A.
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The NY Times reports Retail prices fell at record rate in November. “The Labor Department reported Tuesday morning that consumer prices fell for the second consecutive month, and at the fastest rate since the government began keeping track in 1947.”
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Business Week reminds readers that the unemployment rate is Worse Than it Looks. “The official unemployment number captures only a slice of the total joblessness in the U.S. To be counted as unemployed in this statistic, a worker must not have a job, be currently available for work, and have actively sought employment within the last four weeks. In other words, a lot of the jobless are left out of the government’s tally.”
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Blogger London Banker wrote last Friday that Deflation has become inevitable. “I’m now coming down on the side of deflation for a very simple reason: there is no longer any incentive to save or invest, and so debt and investment cannot increase much beyond current bloated levels.”
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Four at Four continues an update on the shoe tossing Iraqi journalist, Afghanistan, and the shift to mass transit.